There’s nothing like buying good quality, well-sourced clothes — a conscious effort in our current era of Shein hauls and Depop scammers. Luckily, in nearby Woodstock, Vt., lies a hidden gem: the vintage boutique Mahshu.
Co-owner Madison Boardman said she grew up with a love of thrifting — a hobby that led her to start Mahshu with co-owner Bar Dadon “almost nine or 10 years ago.”
“Over time, that passion for collecting evolved into a love for vintage clothing,” she explained.
According to Boardman, Mahshu found initial success as an online resale shop based out of a studio space in Enfield, N.H., around 20 minutes from campus. Boardman said she and Dadon “never planned to open a brick-and-mortar store” but changed their minds as their customer base grew.
“One of the big pushes came when people started showing up at the store, asking when we were going to open — so we decided to give it a shot,” Boardman said.
The original Enfield location allowed Mahshu to connect with Dartmouth students and draw in new customers, according to Boardman. While she said the store garnered “a bunch of student traffic” through Instagram advertising, it lacked something nearby Woodstock could offer: tourism.
Last year, Boardman and Dadon decided to relocate to the nearby town, a popular Vermont tourist destination that brought many new clients to Mahshu, according to Boardman.
“Now that we’re in Woodstock, we’ve found a great balance between tourism, locals and more mature clientele,” Boardman said.
Talis Colberg ’25, who discovered Mahshu through an advertisement on Instagram, first visited the store’s Enfield location. He has since started frequenting the Woodstock location because of his lasting attraction to Mahshu’s unique and locally sourced inventory.
“I think one of the big draws is that a lot of their stuff has some kind of local connection,” Colberg said. “They love vintage art and other vintage stuff from Boston and other schools around here. I’m always a little surprised at how they’ve managed to get so much cool stuff.”
According to Dadon, Mahshu’s pieces might range from “a beautiful leather jacket that you’d see a photo of your mom or dad wearing in college” to “a really worn tote bag that you can tell [has] been loved and … stood the test of time.”
Dadon described himself and Boardman as “professional treasure hunters,” adding that finding quality vintage pieces to sell at Mahshu is an arduous process. While some months are full of acquisitions, others are devoid of purchases, he explained.
According to Dadon, curating the perfect collection to satisfy customers can also be difficult, since each piece is one-of-a-kind — if one piece is particularly popular, they can’t buy more for other interested customers. Moreover, the owners have curated a specific style of vintage clothing — partially “inspired by 20th-century nostalgia and American heritage” — they want to sell, according to Boardman.
“I always think about the things I’d want to steal from my parents’ or grandparents’ closets — those things that can be cherished and passed down through generations,” Boardman said.
Dartmouth students new and old remain loyal to the treasures Mahshu provides. Fern Stewart ’27 said she appreciates that Mahshu offers “old brands that are high quality” as well as “great products in general.”
“I think there’s a really big issue nowadays with a lot of plastics being used in fashion,” she said. “I’ll probably come back [to Mahshu] and get three different awesome sweaters because they’re all such high-quality pieces.”
Outside of vintage resale, Mahshu also offers jean fitting services — or a personal jean search for shoppers — according to Boardman, who describes herself as a “denim freak.”
“There’s so many measurements, fades, washes, cuts for jeans and something that we’ve really enjoyed is having people come in, willing to go through the process of trying on pants and leaving ecstatic about what they found, even wearing it out of the store,” Broadman said. “That’s … something that we’ve really enjoyed doing in person that you can’t do online.”
Above all, the personal connection to shoppers is what makes Mahshu worth a visit, according to Dadon. Online retail doesn’t allow the owners to meet customers or “watch someone get excited and leave with an article of clothing they truly love,” he explained.
While the pair finds matching customers with the perfect piece satisfying, the success of the business is bittersweet, according to Dadon — it can be difficult watching treasured vintage pieces leave for their new homes, he explained.
“A lot of times we’ve sold things that we immediately regret selling, and then I will even sometimes go ahead and find it online, and I’ll end up paying for what I sold it for, which is silly,” Dadon said.
In the end, though, Dadon finds it all to be worth it — and hopes to uphold Mahshu’s mission of bringing customers to well-loved pieces.
“You’re in a sense making a little bit of an investment when you buy a piece of clothing,” he said. “The type of clothing that tells a story — that’s what we like to offer.”
